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Marco felt like he’d been run over by a truck. Well, probably, if a truck gives you fucking cotton mouth and a pounding headache after running you over. And there was something...Prickly in his arms? What the fuck? He attempted to pry his eyes open (failing miserably: They were glued shut against the pain as well as eye crusties, gross), but upon failure decided that he would just figure out what he was cuddling that was so damn prickly without opening his eyes yet. Well, there were definitely two different prickly parts to it: The lower part, closer to his own belly, felt a bit harsher than the part that was brushing against Marco’s unshaven chin. Marco stroked it from the top downwards, frowning slightly as he moved his hand back up. The top of the thing felt more prickly on the way down than up, and the bottom part felt the same amount of prickliness in either direction. So...Marco’s eyes snapped open as he stared down at the pineapple in his arms, ignoring the thundering headache for a few seconds in light of his new confusion.
“...Where did you come from?” Marco asked aloud, trying to recall fuzzy memories of party after party from last night. There were...Three, right? Or was it four? Marco had lost count of how many times his cousin Ymir and their friend Reiner had dragged him out of one house party and into the next, sometimes still holding a red solo cup of whatever was being served that was knocked out of his hands as soon as they were outside. And, yeah, sometimes Marco did have a little drunken tendency of stealing things from parties...It wasn’t a bad thing, usually, since he normally only ever went to one party and knew exactly where to return the stolen thing to. But Reiner had whined that they needed to go to Annie’s post-victory celebration for her hockey team winning all their games in the past two weeks, and Ymir’s friend was having an almost-the-end-of-the-semester party, and Marco needed to at least make an appearance at Thomas’s party after gently turning him down for a date last month…So they had gone to all of them. And Marco was full of so much regret.
Maybe he should stop cuddling the pineapple, at least. It was a very nice pineapple, though. Obviously whoever had owned it knew how to pick pineapples that were just about to turn ripe; or they were good at guessing pineapple ripeness...Wait, why was he concerned about how ripe or unripe the stolen pineapple was? Marco was a good guy, and he would make sure that this pineapple was returned to its rightful owner! With that thought in mind, Marco put the pineapple up on his bedside table, drawing an absolute blank on where it was from. It proooobably wasn’t from Thomas’s party...Right? They had started out there originally, so it was highly unlikely that he had gotten drunk fast enough to legitimize stealing something from the party. Marco shook his head slightly, cursing himself for drinking so much and getting a damn hangover, before his eyes fell on the little pad of post-it notes also resting on the table. It gave him an idea, possibly a terrible idea, but an idea all the same.
With his excellent drawing skills, Marco made a little frowny face on the top post-it note after unearthing an ancient sharpie, and slapped it onto the pineapple. Then he took a quick photo of it with his phone, uploading it to Twitter with the caption “I’m lost :( Please help me get home! #partypineapple”. With a slight nod, Marco dropped his phone onto his bed and went to get something for his headache. His friends would probably retweet it from him, knowing that he had a tendency to steal things if he got too drunk...With a slight sniff, Marco decided he’d at least earned himself a shower and teeth brushing, for being a responsible adult and beginning the search to find the owner of the #partypineapple.
When he entered his kitchen, freshly showered, brushed, and dressed with the pineapple in tow (now sporting pink shutter shades, the newest photo on his twitter now captioned with “trying to hide its pain from being lost #partypineapple”), Marco wasn’t all that surprised to find Ymir already in there, hovering over his toaster. Ymir could probably pick the lock of any door that was in her way, so it was probably much safer for Marco if he just gave her a key to his little apartment, which she used frequently, especially after nights out partying. Ymir barely glanced in his direction, probably intent on making sure the toaster didn’t scare her like it usually did, before staring back at Marco’s little fruity companion. Of course, while Ymir was staring, the toaster popped, making her jump in surprise before glaring at the offending machine and taking her toast a little more vehemently than absolutely necessary.
“G’mornin’,” Marco yawned widely, placing the pineapple on the tiny table smushed into the corner, before foraging for food in his cabinets. Did he still have more Lucky Charms left? He really hoped so, they weren’t on sale this week and he really didn’t feel like having to fill the void that was his belly with the store brand. Marco completely ignored Ymir’s continued staring, finding his new box of Lucky Charms (thank you cereal gods!) hiding behind a few boxes of granola bars, snapping up a paper bowl before grabbing the milk.
“Who’s your new friend? Meet them at the party last night?” Ymir asked snidely as she nibbled on one of the toast corners.
“Oh, sorry, how rude of me! Ymir, this is #PartyPineapple, #PartyPineapple, this is my cousin Ymir, who probably doesn’t remember how we met either,” Marco said casually over his shoulder as he poured milk into his bowl, quickly capping and shoving it back into the fridge once the optimal amount of milk was in his cereal. Ymir shook her head mournfully before shoving the rest of the mostly-full slice of toast into her mouth, chewing noisily. Marco shoved his hand into the box of plastic spoons, trying to block out Ymir’s chewing by competing with loud chewing noises when he shoved his first spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
“Lemme guess, posted it on Twitter to try and find who you stole it from?” Ymir asked in a bored tone after she somehow swallowed her mouthful of toast. Marco nodded, the spoon sticking out of his mouth before hurriedly sticking his bowl of cereal (and now empty spoon) in front of the pineapple, lifting the shutter shades to rest just about where the leaves of the pineapple started, snapping a quick photo, before continuing eating, thumbing through his phone to post the new photo. (He captioned it “a lil less sad w/ some breakfast, still trying to find home #partypineapple”.) Ymir hummed as she pulled out her own phone, probably checking Twitter as well, before starting to cackle as she slowly scrolled through Marco’s feed, which consisted of various photos of the pineapple with the same dumb hashtag. Some of them had post-it note frowny faces like the first one, others had the ridiculous shudder shades, but all of them basically said “please help me find my way home”.
“It’s not funny,” Marco sniffed with a frown, stirring his cereal like it was soup. “I don’t know who it belongs to. Maybe it belonged to someone I never met before, and now their first impression of me is going to forever be ‘that drunk man who stole my pineapple’, and that’s a terrible first impression.” Hopefully, the rightful owner of the pineapple had a sense of humor, and maybe he could play it off as a prank...Marco’s phone kindly buzzed at that point, probably a text, but he ignored it to slurp down his bowl of milk noisily. Ymir kind of gave him an annoyed look, but she was a bit too preoccupied scrolling through the Twitter page of her friend Jean, who appeared to be off his rocker with how upset he was about his missing pineapple.
Shoving his empty bowl and spoon into the garbage, Marco wiped his hands on his sweatpants before picking up his phone. It wasn’t a text, but a Twitter DM, from a very angry person who was pissed about the pineapple. Their Twitter handle was @kirschFINE, and after Marco clicked on their profile, he figured out why. The first few tweets were “ARE YOU KIDDING ME SOMEONE STOLE MY GODDAMN PINEAPPLE AFTER I WAS A GRACIOUS PARTY HOST”, followed by “ALL THE ALCOHOL AND FOOD THAT ANY PARTY COULD WANT, AND YET HERE WE ARE. FUCKIN PINEAPPLE THIEF”. However, the DM at least a little bit less capslocked, and more along the lines of “what the fuck, give me my goddamn pineapple back, what even possessed you to take my pineapple from the back of the fucking fridge”.
Marco frowned slightly, looking from his own fridge to the pineapple and back. That...Was supposed to be refrigerated? Well, shit. Marco messaged this angry guy back, a simple ‘i’d return it if i knew who u were. I was dragged to 3 or 4 parties last nite, so idk where to bring it, if u even do own this fine fruit’. Marco turned to Ymir, asking “So, this @kirschFINE person...Is that your friend whose party we went to last night?”
Ymir snorted as she nodded, adding “Yup, that’s my Jeanbo. That party was kickass too, all those hot wings and shit. Then you had to take his goddamn pineapple.” Ymir tried to sound more disappointed than amused, but it was a lost cause. Once her most recent chorus of cackles had calmed into a few small chuckles, she stood and patted Marco’s shoulder, sympathetically saying “My guy, you’re fucked. Jean’s a pissed-off motherfucker on his best days, but stealing a fruit’s fruit…” She tisked, picking up her jacket to swing over her shoulder as she sauntered out of Marco’s apartment, making sure to lock the door behind her. At least one of them could hold their liquor, and she had a date to get ready for that night after meeting a cute little blonde at Thomas’s party.
Marco let out a loud groan as his phone thumped onto the table in front of him. Of course it had to be Ymir’s friend Jean, who he hadn’t met before, but had heard all the horror stories about. All the fist fights he got into, especially the ones that Ymir had to go and pick his ass up from the hospital after; how he was always the one that had lock picking tools, even if there was absolutely no reason for that to be necessary; and most of all, how downright angry he was about 95% of the time. And that was coming from Ymir, who was angry and frustrated about something somewhere around 85% of the time. Christ, Marco was totally boned, especially as his phone buzzed once again, probably another incensed DM from @kirschFINE. Marco was almost fearful to look at what he said.
It was a surprisingly calm message back: “Ymir’s my bro, she’d vouch for me. Def thought I saw her and Reiner at least once last night, so if you were trawling with them...But can I come pick up my pineapple?” Marco let out a small snort, because yeah, he had been “trawling” with them. Trawling didn’t feel like the right word for it though, seeing as they had all had obligations on the same night and just decided to have fun with it. Marco texted Ymir quickly, seeing as she knew Jean best, asking if she thought he could be trusted with his address and wouldn’t break into his place to steal his stuff. He didn’t have to wait long for Ymir’s response (which basically boiled down to Jean being a good guy, and to “get some”, which made Marco groan in annoyance), and sent out his reply to Jean, saying he’d be home all day after quickly checking his schedule. @kirschFINE sent one more message, just a quick “omw, should take ~five minutes”, making Marco raise his eyebrows. He must...Really want his pineapple back.
Somewhere around ten minutes later, Marco heard a knock on his door, which stupidly made his heart flutter as he hurried to get it. Of course, in the time it had taken between now and @kirschFINE’s last message, Marco had taken it upon himself to investigate Jean, who had helpfully had a link to his instagram (also under the same handle) right on his page. Which meant that Marco was treated to a whole bunch of after gym progress selfies, ootd shots (that only seemed to be posted during the weekdays), and...Floral arrangements. Yeah, apparently this rough and tumble guy, who was always getting into trouble, was a florist. Or, at least part time, while going to school for a degree in botany, if any of the capslock’d tweets of confusion and rage at Professor Zoe were anything to go by. It was kind of...Endearing, reading his annoyed tweets about having to put up with the famously eccentric professor’s antics, and reading the large descriptive paragraphs of what he had chosen for an arrangement and why, and it had all boiled down to a feeling of ‘oh shit, he’s hot’. Marco truly was fucked, but he had to give this guy his pineapple back, so with a deep breath to calm himself, he opened the door, with hopefully a bright (and not too flirtatious) smile on his face still.
Jean, @kirschFINE, was rocking back on the heels of his feet when Marco opened the door. He didn’t look particularly pissed, more of a neutral sort of frown, and a slight crease between his eyebrows that indicated he usually had them furrowed together. In a very baggy tank top that said “I woke up like this: Flawless” with a princess crown on it, and denim short shorts, he didn’t look as intimidating as his reputation made him seem. Marco definitely thought he seemed anything but intimidating now, but he politely said “I assume you’re @kirschFINE, and I’m sorry I stole your pineapple”, as best he could without breaking down with laughter.
Jean raised an eyebrow at him, slowly shifting his weight back onto the entirety of his feet, as he said “Well, I’m gonna assume that you’re FreckleFrackle, though I’m highly suspect to that being your actual name. I’m indeed kirschFINE, but call me Jean.” At that, Marco did laugh, motioning for Jean to follow him inside.
“No, my name isn’t FreckleFrackle, most people know me as Marco,” He said over his shoulder as he headed to the kitchen to grab the pineapple. Jean hovered sort of anxiously in the doorway, unsure if he should close the door or not, while Marco grabbed a plastic shopping bag to shove the pineapple into. An idea popped into Marco’s mind though, and before he could wonder if it was a good or a bad idea, he was talking. “So...How about you take more than one fruit home with you today?” He asked, as he handed the pineapple to Jean, almost freezing in shock when he realized that had come out of his mouth. Jean blinked at him slowly, before deadpanning.
“Sorry, I’m already bringing myself and the pineapple home, I don’t think I have enough room for more fruits on my bike.” Jean said flatly, but his eyes glittered with mirth, and that gave Marco just the little bit of hope he needed.
“Oh, okay,” Marco said slowly, before biting the bullet and asking “Could I at least get your number? I mean, if I end up at another one of your parties and get as drunk as I did last night, I’d rather be able to get your pineapple back to you without embarrassing myself on Twitter and turning into a meme.” He added hastily, a half formed smirk making his words a little less innocent. Jean smirked right back at him, but looked pleased with himself as he nodded and recited his number, Marco immediately texting it, feeling inordinately pleased as Jean’s phone chimed from getting his text. Jean wiggled his phone out of his pocket, raising an eyebrow challengingly as he replied, before breezing out the door with a “Thanks for my pineapple”. Marco only jumped into moving when his phone buzzed at him, grinning at Jean’s reply.
Jean @kirschFINE
Sounds good to me Marco. See you tonight.